U.S. Bancorp at The BancAnalysts Conference: Payments Strategy in Focus

On Friday, 07 November 2025, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) presented at The BancAnalysts Association of Boston Conference, emphasizing its strategic focus on the payments sector. While the company expressed satisfaction with its current performance, it also highlighted the need for ongoing improvements. The discussion covered investments in infrastructure and marketing to foster growth, while acknowledging the challenges posed by competition.

Key Takeaways

• U.S. Bancorp's payments business accounts for 26% of total revenue, with a goal of mid-single-digit growth.
• Elavon, its merchant acquiring business, is the fifth largest in the U.S., with strategies to enhance growth amid competition.
• The bank is increasing marketing investments and expanding its sales capacity to boost its market position.
• New products like the Split Card Mastercard aim to capture younger consumers, while Business Essentials targets small businesses.
• The company maintains a strong market position, with 70% of its credit cardholders having FICO scores above 720.

Financial Results

• U.S. Bancorp is a $680 billion bank, with 42% of revenues from fees.
• The bank processes nearly $1 trillion in purchase volume annually.
• Elavon generated $1.8 billion in fee income over the past year.

Operational Updates

• U.S. Bancorp is the seventh largest card issuer, with a diversified distribution model and high-quality customer base.
• The Smartly product has reached 40% of consumer DDA households, with expansion plans for small businesses.
• Marketing investment has increased by nearly 20% compared to the previous three-year average.
• Elavon focuses on embedded payments and indirect distribution channels, increasing sales capacity by over 10%.

Future Outlook

• The bank aims to enhance its direct sales and marketing capacity, shifting the mix from 40% to 50-60%.
• Business Essentials will expand, with a bundled card offering expected by 2026.
• U.S. Bancorp seeks to leverage market disruptions to attract skilled professionals and drive innovation.

Q&A Highlights

• U.S. Bancorp focuses on providing value to consumers and small businesses, especially in the issuing segment.
• The bank is a price leader in the small business market, emphasizing execution and talent acquisition.
• Embedded payments and value-added services are key growth drivers, with a consistent market share over five years.

In conclusion, U.S. Bancorp's strategic investments and innovative products position it for continued growth in the payments sector. For more details, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - The BancAnalysts Association of Boston Conference:

John, Financial Officer, U.S. Bank: Financial Officer. John has been with the organization since 2000, and prior to becoming Head of Finance in 2023, he held various leadership positions with the company, including President for the Global Corporate Trust and Custody Business, as well as Corporate Treasurer. Joining John today is Courtney Kelso, Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Payments for Consumer and Small Business. Prior to joining U.S. Bank in 2025, she spent more than 17 years in Consumer and Small Business Payments at American Express. We also have Mark Runkel, Vice Chair and Head of Payments for Merchants and Institutional. Mark's been with U.S. Bank since 2002, and prior to heading Commercial Payments, he served in various roles, including Chief Transformation Officer, Executive Credit Officer of Retail Banking and Payment Services, as well as Risk Manager of Retail and Small Business Banking.

Please join me in welcoming John, Courtney, and Mark.

John, Unidentified role, U.S. Bank: Thanks. Great. Thank you, Jerry. Appreciate the introduction. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us here today. Really excited to be with you. I just want to point out, as you look at this page, we may make forward-looking statements that may have risk and uncertainty. Make sure we please look at the Safe Harbor page that we have here. As Jerry mentioned, and many of you know, obviously, U.S. Bank, we are a $680 billion bank as of the third quarter of this last year. We do have 42% of our revenues are with fee revenue characteristics, and then we have nearly a trillion dollars of payments that go through in terms of purchase volume that we have on an annual basis. We're just coming off the third quarter from an earnings perspective, and we are very pleased with the results that we had there.

About a year ago, you will recall that we had talked to you about our medium-term targets from an Investor Day at our Investor Day, and obviously, you can see those medium-term targets on the right-hand side of this page. We're pleased to see that we're in the range of each of those targets at this point. However, we're not satisfied with that. We do expect of ourselves to be consistent in this range and steadily improve as we go through, and that's a big focus from a management perspective. You know, today we're going to be focusing on the payment side of our businesses. We're very pleased with these businesses. It's a unique and differentiator for us.

We have a lot of different components to it, and today we're very excited to share with you that over 90% of the revenue within this stream, which of course is 26% of total revenue for the bank, we'll be discussing that today. Courtney will talk about the card issuing side of the equation. Mark will talk about the merchant processing component as well, and then we'll be happy to take questions, of course, when we're done with our prepared remarks. A couple of notes I would just say before I hand it over to Courtney on as it pertains to these businesses, the first being from a standpoint of if you think about our costs and where we have been, top of house for the bank, we have been running at eight quarters or so in terms of about $4.2 billion.

That flat cost that we've had while that has been going on, we've actually had an increase in our investments we've been making in the payment side of things. I would importantly, over the last several years, we've been making significant investments within the payment side of things in terms of structure, in terms of systems, and a lot of that cost is already embedded into our run rate. As we continue to make investment, what you'll hear from Courtney and Mark is really about the strategies we have in place in terms of increasing spend as it relates to marketing, in terms of distribution, in terms of sales resources, and things of that variety. The second point I would make is that, as Gunjan and I have talked about, we believe these businesses are mid-single-digit businesses.

As we get our strategies up and running, that you'll hear about, mid-single digit is the appropriate, but we have potential for the upside. We'll talk about that as we go throughout the course of today. With that, I will pass it along to Courtney Kelso, who will talk about the card issuing side. Courtney.

Courtney Kelso, Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Payments, Consumer and Small Business, U.S. Bank: Thanks, John. Morning, everyone. Pleased to be here with you to talk about, this is us, to talk a little bit about the multifaceted ways that U.S. Bank participates in the payments value stream. As mentioned, Courtney Kelso, Head of Payments, Consumer and Small Business, which is our credit and debit issuing business. I joined earlier this year, so I've been at the bank for about nine months after a 17-year career with American Express, where I have led multiple efforts across consumer and small business, most recently leading their small business issuing business. As you can see, U.S. Bank operates across multi-dimensions of the payments journey.

For example, on an illustrative $100 consumer transaction at a merchant, with that swipe at a merchant, the merchant acquirer then settles that route through the Visa or Mastercard networks and settles with the merchant, providing them with the economics that you see here. We, as issuers, approve the transaction. We also issue the cards, issue the credit, and run the account management. As you can see here in this illustrative example, an issuer may make around 200 basis points in fee income from that transaction. The vast majority of that is passed along to the consumer or the small business in the form of rewards. Now, the remainder of that comes to issuers in the form of fee income. For U.S. Bank, that's about a third of our revenue stream.

The other two-thirds of that is comprised of net interest income we make on loans extended through that product. Now, the value stream here and the economics available are not the only reasons that a bank would be interested in this space. Ever more, the card and payments issuing side of a bank is becoming a very powerful customer, new-to-bank customer acquisition engine, attracting young, affluent transactors. It is a big part of what we find valuable here at U.S. Bank. The industry itself is large and growing, 5% over the past five years, and it is really dominated by the top 10 players. We are proud to have consistently maintained the seventh position in this marketplace and therefore operate very prudently and intentionally in a space where we can grow, but grow responsibly.

What you see on the right-hand side, this prudent and intentional space as measured on the x-axis by risk management and net credit loss, and then on the y-axis by yields through disciplined pricing. What you see here, again, an attractive market growing at around 5% historically, number seven position that we've held consistently with a very prudent and intentional space that we've carved out. Now, what differentiates this book from our peers is our diversified distribution model. Here on the left-hand side, you see we run a proprietary or bank-branded business. It's about 50% of our revenue stream. Here we serve consumers, small businesses with about 20 really interesting rewards, lending, cashback, debit products. We leverage the 2,200, 2,100 bank branches in our footprint, as well as nationally market.

We have a really strong franchise here, in fact, one that probably does not look just like a super regional. We also have a robust co-brand business. In that co-brand business, we are able to serve the loyal customers of national brands all across the United States. These two models together look more like a national credit card issuing business. Third in our distribution model is our Elan business, excuse me, which is our white-labeled credit card issuing business, which allows us to partner with 1,300 smaller financial institutions, community banks, and credit unions across consumers and small business. We operate in 50 states, 16,000 locations. Taken together, this distribution model is pretty differentiated compared to peers. We attract and manage a high-quality and durable base.

What you see here on the left-hand side is that more than 70% of our consumers are FICOs with 720 and above. This is about 11 percentage points higher than the industry. So a very high-quality base. In the middle here, though, what you see is that a very high percentage of non-discretionary spend, almost 60%. This is food, this is restaurants, this is retail. These are the areas where consumers and small businesses are running their lives and their businesses through these sorts of spend, perhaps creating more durability through the cycle. And we have a balanced mix of transactors and revolvers that help us drive diversified income. I mentioned about a third of our revenue pools come from fee income and about two-thirds come from net interest income. Now, in the last five years, we've been investing in the capabilities needed for real growth in this space.

I'll tell you about three of those things that we've done over the last five years that now position us for growth. What you see here on the right-hand side, you may be familiar with our Smartly product we launched last year. What it allows us to do is really bring together the power of the enterprise and the franchise and created a product that enables enhanced rewards for the deposits and the accounts that you have with us. Importantly here, it is one application flow that has driven so far really impressive new-to-bank stats and day zero deepening multi-service clients. What you see on the left-hand side is that at 40%, we are penetrating to 40% of our consumer DDA households in the bank. I think there's a lot of opportunity therefore to grow.

We have plans on the small business side to introduce a similar product and offering, bringing together the services across retail banking as well as card in order to do the same thing and to activate the opportunity you see here. We have about 25% penetration today. You see the progress we've made in Union Bank and in deepening with that population. Meaningfully shifting any of these populations to 40% or more penetration will be very valuable to our franchise in the medium term. Secondly, we've also increased tech and digital investments heavily. We've made multi-year generational investments across digital tech and capabilities. We've invested in online journeys, easier and more customer-friendly application onboarding, mobile banking. Certainly, we've invested in partner capabilities that allow us to embed more seamlessly into our partners' ecosystems.

We have invested in the types of product capabilities that our customers are really interested in. ExtendPay, as an example, we have also back in 2021 acquired Bento, which gave us the spend management capabilities that we can deliver to larger small businesses. Finally, we have revitalized our partnership platforms to drive growth. I mentioned Elan allows us to partner with 1,300 smaller FIs throughout the United States, 50-state footprint here. Those investments, both in products that we have been able to take from our proprietary business and in API platforms and ecosystem developments, allow this to be a really important distribution mechanism for us. You see here on the right-hand side, we have co-brand examples where we are able to leverage the distribution available through our co-brand partners to really drive growth.

Finally, I'll say if we just add together the awarded but not yet installed base coming through both of these distribution channels, that is also meaningful in the medium term. With all of that investment, we are very poised to deliver growth and transform this business. We have three strategies underway today. First, product and marketing innovation. I'll start on the product side. You may have seen on Wednesday we launched Split Card Mastercard. That is a BNPL Lite product that allows younger consumers who are our target in this product to split transactions over $100 into three separate installment Lite payment plans. We learned from our ExtendPay offering that this is a really valuable and in-demand service.

We are really working to use smart marketing dollars, smart digital campaigns, and we have increased our marketing investment in ways that finally, now that we're ready to really be tooled for growth, you see we are investing at least this year almost 20% more than in prior years, the three prior years. Secondly, we're scaling through partnerships. With Elan, we are embedding into scaled banking platforms to allow ourselves to more efficiently get the long tail of those 4,500 smaller financial institutions and community banks, credit unions. You may have seen on Monday of this week, we launched our co-branded partner offerings through our Edward Jones Alliance. Those are now available for all 20,000 of the Edward Jones financial advisors.

An example here is after many of the investments we've made through partner integrations, just this year alone in one of our key co-brands, we've increased acquisition by 40%. Finally, small business expansion. We have a foothold here today. You see 10% of our accounts, 20% of our revenue is in small business. Now with planned developments like Business Essentials, as I mentioned, a bundled integrated card product along with merchant processing and deposit accounts coming in 2026 will allow us to provide more tooled capabilities for the larger small business. We see a lot of opportunity here and we're going after it. I'd finally say that it's early days, but we are executing a strategy really focused on momentum. We're seeing green shoots of this. As you see, increased account acquisition this year will be our largest new credit account acquisitions in our franchise history.

You see sequential quarter-by-quarter growth in credit fee revenue and then increasing receivables growth through a high-returning book. Happy to answer questions in a moment when we get there. I'll now turn it over to Mark Runkel.

John, Financial Officer, U.S. Bank: Great. Thank you, Courtney. Good morning, everybody. I'm excited to be with all of you this morning to share a little bit more about our payments merchant and institutional group. As Jerry noted, I have been at the bank 23 years. I've served in a number of different roles. I served as the Chief Credit Officer for about eight of those years. I've served as the Chief Transformation Officer driving the Union Bank integration for a few years. This morning, I get to talk about our payments basis that I'm quite excited about, one that is unique and a differentiator that John noted. Let me start on page 16. You'll see the full value stream that Courtney had walked through earlier today.

You see in our merchant acquiring business where we play, which is in the center of the page, which includes the core merchant acquiring business, which handles the processing and payments on behalf of the merchant. Over time, we've added additional gateway capabilities to be able to pass more data and information back to the merchants. We've also added, most recently in the last three to five years, software capabilities to really help businesses run their business on a day-to-day basis and embedding all of our payment capabilities into those. At the bottom of the page, you'll see kind of a good illustrative example. Now, these are industry economics. We're on that $100 transaction that Courtney had referenced earlier. We would generate on a transaction basis of just under 50 basis points of revenue.

In addition to that, we would also generate revenue from value-added services, which is a growing part of the business, as well as our software capabilities. Elavon is the fifth largest merchant acquirer in the United States. Over the last 12 months, we've generated $1.8 billion of fee income for the company, which represents about 15% of the total fee income for the company. We have scale and reach, as you see in the middle of the page. We are very focused in on these five key industry verticals at the bottom of the slide where we bring both payments and banking together for our customers. We compete in a very dynamic landscape that you see on page 18. We compete against legacy acquirers as well as the emerging fintech providers. We operate with higher margins with moderately lower levels of growth, especially compared to the fintech providers.

Oftentimes, we get asked, why do we get this advantage on the operating margin? It's simply because we have one back-end processing platform that we've converted all of our merchants onto, number one, and our differentiated distribution that we'll walk through in a little bit. Clients choose us for many reasons. You see those on the right-hand side of the slide. What I'll say is, since I've joined in this role since January, I've had a chance to meet with a lot of customers. There's lots of reasons why they choose us.

If I pick on the airline carriers that I've talked to, they will consistently tell me our organizational stability, our resiliency in our platforms and our systems, as well as our strong risk management capabilities are part of the reasons why they want to partner with a strong acquirer that's backed by a strong bank and balance sheet. In the healthcare space, I often hear from our customers about data privacy, think HIPAA and things like that. We're integrating a lot of our payment processing capabilities through our Seleucro assets as well as our other platforms into their systems and making sure that we have strong risk management as well as strong data privacy is extremely important to them.

On the small business side, as I've had a number of conversations with small business owners, they're very interested in not only our banking capability, but also the ability to have payments and software fully embedded together. We were able to deliver that to them in a simplified manner at a pricing advantage relative to the marketplace. We're executing on our strategy to accelerate the growth while maintaining those strong margins. We have three key strategies that we're focused in on. The first one is the embedded payments. This was formerly known as tech-led. The second is our differentiated distribution. The third is our industry vertical prioritization. That industry vertical prioritization is bringing both that banking and payments together. Slide 20 gives you a view on our embedded payments. This is an area that we've seen very nice growth over the last five plus years.

It's growing 4X our core acquiring capabilities from a growth rate perspective. In order to maintain and accelerate that momentum, we have five key initiatives that you see on the right-hand side of the page that we're focused in on to drive the growth moving forward. I'd say the couple that I would call out is the first one, and the third one are probably the two in the short term that's driving a lot of productivity by the team. One is our omnichannel payment gateway. We call it the Elavon Payment Gateway platform. It's built on a very new modern tech stack. It allows customers to be able to process transactions online as well as in brick and mortar or in store and to be able to purchase something online, return it in a store, seamless on the back end for the client.

Like I said, it's built on a very common tech stack. That tech stack sets us up for new payment rails that may be coming in the future as well as any kind of agentic commerce that may be coming down the road. The second would be the software-led. This is an area over the last three to five years we've continued to invest in new software called Taloc is one we bring to market with small business, Seleucro in the healthcare space. And so those software assets that we own will continue to invest in the product capabilities as we move forward. The final one on the page is agentic commerce. This is one that's gaining a lot of momentum and traction. What I would say is we're early stages. We're partnering with some of the card associations to run some pilots.

is still a lot of rules that need to be determined in terms of some of the fraud chargeback rights and the like as it relates to that. We are early stages, but we want to continue to be a leader in the payment space. We are going to invest in that as we move forward. Our second strategy is differentiated distribution. You will see on the left-hand side of the page, our current distribution is 40% direct through a U.S. Bank branch or a banker that we have on staff. 60% of it is through an indirect channel or a partner that we go to market. We enjoy much stronger economics where we go to market on our own through the direct channel. What we are going to be focused in on is changing the overall mix of that business over the next few years.

We want to get it into a 50-60% kind of range. We have three key initiatives that we plan to execute to drive the change in the overall mix. I would start by the first one is going to be to increase the sales and marketing capacity. This year alone, we're already increasing the number of bankers that we have selling this product on the team. We're up over 10%. We're seeing a lot of momentum with our other U.S. Bank distribution channels. We are optimistic that we can drive this interconnective growth strategy as we move forward. We'll also be focused in on brand harmonization as well as inorganic growth opportunities that really extend our distribution and reach. The third strategy that we're focused in on is our industry vertical prioritization.

These five key industries make up 85% of the total TAM in the marketplace. On the left-hand side, you see that we're focused in on the small to medium-sized businesses in the retail, restaurant, and services sector. I would say we've invested in the Taloc capability, but most recently, we launched our Business Essentials products, which brings together kind of a best-in-class business checking account with our core merchant acquiring capability all bundled in one. One seamless underwriting process onboarding is very simple and easy. The customer comes into the branch, walks out with a deposit account. They walk out with the ability to accept payments, and they walk out with the software to help them run their business. So far, early innings is the take rate of new small businesses is about two times what we've historically seen.

We're very excited and optimistic that we'll continue to see this continue to accelerate the momentum. That will also help us shift the overall mix of our distribution moving forward. On the right-hand side, you see some of the healthcare and the travel sector. We, like I said, bought a Seleucro asset, which is a software solution that we embed our payments into that we're selling into large hospital systems right now. This year alone, we've already won 50-plus new deals. This is an area we put a lot of balance sheet to work in terms of loans. We're going back and deepening those client relationships, and we're seeing great success. We're in the middle of installing a lot of those, which gives us a lot of momentum from a revenue perspective as we close the year and going into next.

On the travel sector, this has been an area of strength for us for many years. You'll see we have eight of the top 10 global airlines and that we have seven of the top 10 hotel brands that we continue to support. With that, I'll close by just saying we're executing this strategy to accelerate our growth, maintain those strong, attractive margins. We have three key priorities: embedded payments, differentiated distribution, and the third is those industry vertical prioritizations. You see our success to date. We've hit this inflection point. We've continued to see momentum building throughout the year, which gives us great confidence in the path ahead. With that, I want to play the brand campaign that we'll be launching in 2026. Thank you for your time and look forward to the questions. I turn it over to you, Jerry. All right.

Are you going to—it played. Just a quick—yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Good. We do not want to take all of it. Yeah. All right. Thank you both for walking us through your respective strategies. Maybe we will start off just high level. I will take the first one, and then we will open it up to the audience and just kind of walk through kind of key considerations or potential hurdles you have as you think about executing in the near to medium term. Yeah. I would be happy to start. Thanks for the question. As clearly as you have heard, we see there is really attractive growth potential in the credit issuing business. We need to continue to play to our strengths and operate in the spaces that we know well, certainly leveraging our strong breadth of products and our interconnected approach to both acquiring and deepening with customers.

Secondly, we want to continue to attract the kinds of customers that have brought us success thus far. Thirdly, in marketing, we need to continue to invest in marketing to bring customers into the franchise, but we need to do so in a way that is targeted, that is data-driven, and smartly applying that marketing spend nationwide to efficiently acquire customers. We think a lot about really playing where we can leverage our strengths. The last thing I'd say is we look very closely at the health of the consumer, which, as we've described, at least in our book right now, we see a really resilient consumer who continues to spend and grow their spend. Of course, we are sensitive to macroeconomic and other sort of strains just generally. We watch for that.

I would add, just in my businesses, I would just say that we're very focused in on leaning in on the execution component of it, number one. Number two is really accelerating the mix of our direct distribution is a great focus of ours as we move forward. The third area that I would just kind of highlight is the fact that we're continuing to bring in additional sales capacity, making sure that we find the right talent to help us execute the strategy is critically important as we move forward. I think the good news is the market in which we operate today, there's just been a tremendous amount of disruption, and that disruption has created an opportunity for us to find some really very talented folks that want to come on to our platform.

We're very excited about the future, but obviously, we're executing, and results kind of speak for themselves. Thank you. Betsy, do we have a mic? We can repeat. Thanks very much for the in-depth presentation and driving where the growth drivers are coming from. I do have a strategic question. Courtney, you came from American Express, and you've got the integrated. Oh, hi. Betsy Grasek, Morgan Stanley. Thanks so much for everything. The strategic question I have is on whether or not it would be useful to have a slice of the network. You come from Amex with the integrated package, right? We know you are unique at U.S. Bancorp as being an issuer and a merchant acquirer.

If you did have a deal with either Mastercard or Visa or AMX or a rail to own that slice of it, I feel like it would give you even more flexibility in pricing and creating solutions for customers. Is that a fair strategic question, or does it not bring anything useful to the table? It's a fair strategic question, of course. We are really focused on the value we can provide consumers and small businesses on the issuing side where we find good economics, certainly. I know you would probably say the same thing on the acquiring side. This is not something we have that's sort of on our strategic dashboard, so to speak, at this time. I think you would. Yeah.

No, I would just add that our focus is on the Business Essentials product that I had mentioned that we're bringing both the payments as well as business checking. I think next year, as Courtney alluded to, we're going to be putting together the card offering as part of that bundle as well. I think that's the opportunity in the near term. I think longer term that you highlight bringing those two together on the back end is one that is more on the longer term that we'll continue to evaluate. Okay. On the near term, you did have a bullet point on agentic commerce. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about how you're preparing for that, any tech you need to do for that, and the offerings that you'll be delivering to your clients? Thanks. Do you want to start with that one?

We certainly recognize that this is a nascent space, but fast-moving. We are participating with Mastercard in a pilot and tokenization pilot enabling agentic commerce. We are trying to learn as much as we can and be present in the space while this is very quickly developing on the issuing side. Yeah. On the acquiring side, I would just add to that. We're part of those pilots with the card associations. Number one and number two is we built the tech stack in our EPG that I had talked about earlier that allows us, because it's on modern technology, to be able to easily integrate the capabilities to be able to run that agentic commerce. I think the real question for me continues to be is, for example, if you order a pair of shoes online with a bot, who ordered it, and what are the chargeback rights?

Those things all need to be better defined as we move forward. We are early innings. We are investing in it. We are focused in on it as we move forward. A few weeks back, the gentleman who runs the business today, our Elavon business, actually took on a new role that is going to be focused in on money movement as well as the digital assets. That will be a focus area of ours moving forward. We are positioning the organization to be set up to take advantage of the opportunity. Scott. All right. Scott, certainly in light of the Pfizer situation a week or— Thank you. In light of the Pfizer situation a week or two ago, I think there is, right or wrong, just some broader anxiety about pricing and fees in this payment space generally.

Can you sort of speak to where those sorts of concerns may or may not be applicable to the businesses that you all oversee if customer pricing pressures are a factor? Just sort of kind of clear the air on that issue if possible. Yeah. I mean, I could speak on the acquiring side, not commenting on what's happening from the competitors. I will say from our perspective, we price for value that we create in the transaction. It is a very competitive marketplace that we compete in. I think on the front end, we typically see us being a price leader in the marketplace. That's often how we win, especially in the small business side. Occasionally, from time to time, we will look at the backbook and we'll continue to reprice that.

I think that's an area that we have continued to do in our space and we'll continue to do when we feel like the environment's changed and where we have the right to be able to increase it. I think right now, we feel good with how we price it on the frontbook and the backbook. Vivek? A couple of questions for you. Thank you, by the way, for bringing John and the IRT for bringing the payments folks. It's good to have some more color on the business. Mark, starting with you, when you think about the growth that you're talking about coming a lot from embedded finance, can you talk a little bit about what's the margins on those? What's the pricing on that?

When we see your fee rate go down over the years, what is driving that, especially given the mix shift that you are seeing in terms of where the revenue growth is coming from? That is my first question. I have a follow-up. Yeah. I think our embedded payments and our value-added services have really been kind of that core engine that we have seen continued acceleration in the growth. Some of the core transaction processing volume continues to tighten up over time, Vivek. I would say it is those value-added services, being able to be embedded into the customer's software or using some of our software capability, is where we see the growth in the business and, frankly, where the margins are the strongest. What is driving the trajectory of the gradual decline we are seeing in the fee rates over the years?

I'm not talking about one quarter or one year, but just—yeah. If you look over a 10-year period of time, we were just looking at this, right? It's been very flat, right? The core processing revenue, I would say, has kind of been coming down, but we've been offsetting a lot of that with the value-added services, with the embedded capability, the software capability that we're bringing to market. I don't know, John, if you'd add anything else. Exactly right. Yeah. If you step back and take away the net interest income from the card issuing side, but just look at the rest of your payment side business, how has the operating margin or the profitability of the business done over the last few years, given the immense amount of technology spend that one has to do? Can you give any color on that?

I think we would say that we are, historically, we have largely—our offerings have attracted revolvers. We are starting to really create offerings that are attracting more transactors. We strive for a balance. Transactors then are high spending, lowest risk, and very sticky customers. We are really leaning in on that side as well on the fee income side, while preserving the revolving nature of the business. That bubble chart, I think, is very helpful. It shows you where we play. We know where we are from a credit standpoint, the revolving business, but we want to, as you say, lean in more into the transactors to help boost the fee revenue side of the equation. Are we at time for one more? Julian?

Can I ask about market share trends in branded cards, both over the last five years and maybe what you're expecting over the next five years? What have been the drivers of market share? Yeah. I'd say the question about drivers of market share in branded cards. There's been an increasing amount of marketing spend and some consolidation recently that has driven a lot of, again, consolidation at the top end of the market. What we've been pleased to see and what I have been pleased to see is that while that market share has shifted really through the top five players or so, U.S. Bank's market share has stayed largely consistent over the course of the last five years. It's a very, very competitive marketplace for sure, and a lot of attention being paid at the super premium side of the market.

We see a lot of interest, value, and well-served customers on what I would call the mid-premium mass affluent. That is really where we are focused. We are not competing at the upper end of the market in the super premium, crowded, and more expensive space. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mark, Courtney, and John. Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.